In order to begin their independent adult life, a significant number of future students decide to have a 'gap year' before starting their university course. They feel the need to shake off that boredom with school and discover Real Life. They might work for a few months to earn enough money for a ticket and basic expenses and then set out for foreign lands. They might travel on long-distance train routes or fly to more distant parts and try to live on as little money as possible. They might enrol at some institute where they can learn a foreign language, or live in a family in another country to experience a different culture and way of life. They might experiment with short-term exotic or crazy jobs, or spend a year doing voluntary work in some uncomfortable part of the world. This choice is only taken by a minority of students, but it is recognised and often encouraged by the universities.
So here are the new students at a British university. How does their experience differ from that of a Russian student?
In British universities overall about 50% of students are male, 50% female, with wide variations within faculties and in some specialist universities and institutes. Most of the older universities have about equal numbers of male and female students. We have not yet encountered the Russian problem of not enough boys going on to university, although we may suffer from this situation in the future. British students, like Russian students, can study traditional subjects like Physics, Mathematics, History, Philosophy, Philology. In universities with a technological bias, they can study professional subjects like Engineering, Town Planning, Social Work, Media Studies or Tourism and Transport. 'Schools of Art' and 'Schools of Music' are actually special institutes of Higher Education.
If we look at differences, perhaps the most important is that British universities are autonomous. No minister can dictate to a university what it should or should not do. So students who study English literature at one university may find that their course is very different from that at another university. For example, students of English at Oxford University have to read writers from all periods of our literature in considerable detail; at other universities there might be an emphasis on particular genres: drama or poetry or on comparing English with another literature. One university might favour a more historical approach to literature and another put more emphasis on theoretical issues. Each faculty in each university develops its own courses based on the resources of the teachers, the libraries, academic research and belief in what is really essential. Any new courses have to be approved by the academic council and by external academic reviewers to ensure that such courses are serious and coherent, so in fact there is a good deal of sharing of ideas among universities. But in the end, each university makes its own decisions.
The second difference is that British students do not have to take compulsory tests in 'extra' subjects such as mathematics, a foreign language or philosophy. Like you, they may take optional subjects or chose between two or three specialist options, but these choices are all related to the core degree course. British and Russian universities are similar (and differ from American universities) in that, on the whole, students follow a specific course, even when it has options; they do not build up a degree from 'modules' which can produce a very mixed course. A few universities have experimented with modules but the vast majority of British students know more-or-less what they will be studying once they have a place on a particular course at a particular university.
Students learn through lectures, seminars in groups of about 15 to 20 people, occasionally tutorials with two or three people, hours in laboratories, individual research in libraries and on computers and, of course, from discussions with other students. They write essays. At some universities they have to write an essay a week; at others they may only write two essays a term. Their teachers, the university lecturers, may be friendly and easy to talk to, or they may be austere and distant. On the whole British universities are informal places where lecturers and staff often meet on social occasions as well as in the classroom.
Another notable difference between the Russian and British experience is that our students when using university libraries expect to find almost all the books displayed on the shelves. They have free access to these books and are able to browse, read, and borrow without having to ask a librarian to collect a book from some hidden area. It would seem strange - and offensive - to British students to be unable to search for books themselves; some of them may be happy with a computer search, but it is an academic principle that they are able to look through long shelves of books and discover unexpected treasures for themselves. Librarians are there to help them do so.
The very large copyright libraries (the British Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Cambridge University Library, and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales) have simply too many books to display all of them, and have to keep them in reserve stacks (although Oxford and especially Cambridge have a large proportion on open shelves and try to display as many as possible). Russian authorities say that Russian students have the wrong attitude or inadequate culture and would steal the books. I have to explain that British students and lecturers sometimes behave badly and try to steal books, but that we set up systems (investigation of bags, computer cataloguing which allows machines to 'bleep') to prevent this happening. Closed libraries in almost all Russian universities must be one of the biggest obstacles to your academic studies being taken seriously outside Russia. The availability of books on the internet should change this: there will be no point in hiding away your books. Traditionally, as I have explained, our students try to live away from home. Rooms in a hostel or 'hall of residence' are normally for one or two people. They can be very small - bed, wash-basin, table, chair, cupboard fitted in at the end of the bed, and just enough floor space for two people standing - or they can be more spacious. Single rooms, which are quite common, are private. Consequently, solitary hard work, day dreams and sexual relationships can all flourish. On the other hand, lonely students can feel exceedingly lonely. Hostels will often provide a student dining room and simple kitchens for personal cooking. For one, or perhaps two, years of their three-year course, most students will have to find somewhere to live outside the university hostel. They will either rent a single room in a house, or group together with other students to rent a whole house. With three bedrooms and one or two rooms and a kitchen downstairs, five or even six students can be accommodated in one typical English house.
Social life tends to be much more vigorous in English universities. If most students are away from home, they will stay around the university buildings for longer, especially the sports halls and the college bars. For a few this means drinking too much, spending too much money and making unpleasant fools of themselves. But for the majority, a student bar is a friendly place where students can sit around tables, talking, arguing, planning, even singing, while drinking no more than they wish or can afford. It is a place for feeling comfortable.
When they arrive students are greeted with a kind of 'market' of clubs and societies. The range is usually huge: if you are keen on some activity here is the place where you can identify others with a similar enthusiasm. Birmingham University, for example, is a large city university which advertises on its website 133 official student clubs. Almost half of these are connected with sport; others offer students the chance to take part in drama, music, politics or charitable activities, or to join religious groups, film-making groups, international groups or campaigning groups, or simply to seek the company of fellow 'Goths'. And there will be many more clubs which are not on the website. For a small fee to each one the new student can join as many of these clubs as he wishes. He has no reason to feel lonely; he can discover the world! (Not everyone enjoys clubs; it is still possible to feel lonely in a busy university.)